Some of the best breakfasts in Nebraska come from buildings that give you almost no warning. I walked into one expecting eggs and coffee and walked out talking about biscuits for the rest of the week.
The gravy came out homemade, black-pepper flecked, spooned over rounds of dough big enough to cover a palm. It is the kind of morning meal that makes you rearrange your weekend plans around a parking lot on the east side of town.
A Breakfast Counter on North Cotner Boulevard
Pull off North Cotner Boulevard in Lincoln’s Bethany area and the building does not shout. Suite 1, a shared commercial strip, a good-sized parking lot, and a door that swings open into the smell of coffee and frying potatoes.
Cooks Cafe sits about a mile south of where it used to be, and longtime Lincoln breakfast eaters have followed it through more than one address. What it serves has stayed remarkably steady: eggs any way you like, omelets stuffed thick, hash browns crisped hard on the flat top, pancakes wide as a dinner plate, and biscuits under a ladle of homemade sausage gravy…